The Study On The Typeface For Engraving Printing In Song And Ming Dynasty— The Development Of Song Font

With the development of technique of block printing, the song typeface was originated in song dynasty, and became popular in Ming dynasty. It is the first printing typeface of Chinese characters. Its rise is viewed as a great revolution in the history of Chinese characters evolution. And now it has become one of the most widely used typefaces. Due to the properties of conciseness, generality, and stylization,the Song font greatly improves the efficiency of book writing, so that it benefits publication, and entitles the publication of books meet the requirement of the public, not only the elite. With the achievements of calligraphy, history, archaeology, philology, publishing and other related disciplines taken accounted, from the perspective of the design, the thesis tries to get the clear, objective, comprehensive historical development after the thorough analysis on the factors of two periods, including politics, economy, culture, technology, etc. In general, this thesis tries to get a comprehensive understanding about the development of Song typeface with the social development taken accounted, in order to figure out the evolution principle on Chinese font at the theoretical level, and benefit the practice work of Chinese font design.The thesis starts from the "consubstantial synonym phenomenon" of Song typeface. Since it was sprouted in Song dynasty, and finally fixed in Ming dynasty, two names are always used in common, which are “Song” in the mainland of China, and "Ming" in Japan, the Hong Kong, and Taiwan area. Both dynasties, Song and Ming, are indeed two critical periods for the development of Song typeface. In Song dynasty, since the rulers of Song dynasty took the strategy of advocating education, the requirement of publications increased tremendously, so that block printing became more and more prevalent. Books were never regarded as an exclusive of the nobility, and became prevalent for common people as ordinary goods instead. Private press presented increasingly booming vitality, which provided a rare historical opportunity for the development of song. At the same time, the accumulation on both technology and character pattern from previous generations also boosted Song typeface. During Ming dynasty, it is political system that affected the development of Song typeface mostly. As the ruling class loosened the grip of culture, there was roader development space appeared for Song typeface. Moreover, the advertise of new ideas and aesthetic taste of “unusual” during the end of Ming dynasty, Song typeface finally entered the golden age, and became fixed and unchangeable. With the first generation of printing font matured, Chines font entered the age of print.In one word, the Song font is the outstanding representative of practical aesthetics. It is the crystallization of the wisdom of the working people. Song font is so unique due to its properties of popular, practical, economical and efficient. Its development history is actually a transformation process of culture from the elite to the public. It is the strong needs coming from the public that gave the birth to Song font, and it is the policy guidance and the commodity economy provided the thrust to its development. Although the birth of Song font is full of dispute and contempt, it still presented increasingly booming vitality, because it met the modernize course of the society. Eventually it became one of mainstream typeface, and has profound influence on later printing fonts. Because of its incomparable universal adaptation, the Song font showed its vigorous vitality from the date of birth, and has become a piece of the treasure in the system of Chinese characters.